PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts

Via the LAT, Iraq edges closer to Iran, with or without the U.S.:

The Iraqi government is moving to solidify relations with Iran, even as the United States turns up the rhetorical heat and bolsters its military forces to confront Tehran’s influence in Iraq.

Iraq’s foreign minister, responding to a U.S. raid on an Iranian office in Irbil in northern Iraq last week, said Monday that the government intended to transform similar Iranian agencies into consulates. The minister, Hoshyar Zebari, also said the government planned to negotiate more border entry points with Iran.

While there are legitimate concerns about Iranian influence in Iraq, what does one expect? They share a border and with the Shia majority in power in Iraq they share a great deal of common ground.

As such, border crossings and consulates are a logical outgrowth of the removal of Saddam.

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So reports the Times of London: Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

Ok, all very dramatic, to be sure. However, the key phrase is “has drawn up plans”–which doesn’t mean that such a strike is imminent or even likely. It means that they have examined the situation and made plans should they wish to strike Iran–which is the kind of thing that militaries do. I am sure the US has similar plans. Even the report of training is hardly a shocker.

Why do press outlets continually treat news like this with such breathless drama?

I must confess as to my doubts about the underlying tone of the story, which heavily suggests that the Israelis are ready to move at any moment, which is an odd thing to telegraph with specificity. If they really want to have a successful strike, why warn Iran and provide specific targets? It smacks of an attempt at some sort of public diplomacy aimed perhaps at the international community to put pressure on them to deal with Iran before Israel “has to.” Or, at least, to continue to keep the Iranians off balance.

It continues to seem to me that a) an airstrike is unlikely to solve the problem, and b) that any strike, especially a nuclear one, would have the potential to spark a serious international crisis and perhaps a regional war.

James Joyner has similar views and also has a blogospheric round-up.

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John Hinderaker of Powerline is making a proposal to the President (Mr. President, If I May Be So Bold…) which entails pretty much starting a war with Iran as a means of salvaging the Iraq policy.

First he draws an inappropriate analogy between a Civil War battle and Bush’s situation on Iraq and then he launches forth with a statement that there is proof that Iran is helping arm the insurgency in Iraq.

He then proposes:

So here is what you, President Bush, should do: take as a model the Cuban Missile Crisis. First John Kennedy, then Adlai Stevenson, laid before the world the evidence, in the form of aerial photographs, that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear arms in Cuba. The proof was taken as conclusive, and, consequently, the Kennedy administration’s actions enjoyed universal support at home, and widespread support abroad.

There is a major problem here: we tried that with Iraq and it didn’t work out so well. Remember Powell before the UN and all the pictures proving the presence of WMD? It seemed pretty convincing at the time. Problem was, the information was wrong. Any similar presentation would be treated with extreme skepticism, as is only fair (fool me once, shame on you and all that). Even if the information was 100% accurate, it would not be treated the way Hinderaker thinks it would be and, quite frankly, the recent record of US intelligence agencies in these matters hasn’t been all that stellar of late.

But forget the slide show. Hinderaker wants to go a step beyond that:

You should say that Iran’s supplying of weapons in order to kill Americans is an act of war. In the dramatic finale of your speech, announce that thirty minutes earlier, American airplanes stationed in the Middle East took off, their destination, one of the munitions plants or training camps of which you have shown pictures. That training camp, you say, no longer exists. You say that if Iran does not immediately cease all support for, and fomenting of, violence in Iraq, we will continue to strike military targets inside Iran.

In other words: let’s start a war with Iran as a bold move (see the beginning of his post) to salvage the Iraq war.

Indeed, he wishes to go beyond just training camps and the like, he sees this as a chance to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

A forceful and dramatic conclusion. But that isn’t quite the end; instead, in the manner of Columbo or Steve Jobs, you add just one more thing: you declare that no nation that is engaged in killing American servicemen on the field of battle will be permitted to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Iran must either open all nuclear-related facilities to inspection by an international group headed by the U.S. (not the U.N.), immediately and for the foreseeable future, or those facilities, too, will be destroyed, along with the economic infrastructure that supports them.

If you do this, will the country back you? Not all of it. The liberals are too far gone. But half the country–your half–will, and maybe more. It is, after all, a little hard to explain why we should not respond to acts of war committed against us by a hostile nation that has vowed to destroy us.

This is insanity.

For one thing, it would harldy be a 50-50 proposition in terms of support, and second if a President is going to get us involved in a major war, he needs more than 50% support anyway. This is, after all, a democracy and some actions require broad support–major war being one of them.

The last time I checked we were having serious problems executing the war in Iraq. There have been serious and severe questions about the competency of the entire affair and Hinderaker thinks that an expansion of the conflict would be in the interest of the United States? Or that it would actually improve the conditions in the region?

We have already demonstrated that the administration has never known what to do about post-Saddam Iraq, so why in the world would we think they would know what to do in a war with Iran?

Also, in case he hasn’t noticed, we are having problems staffing the military adequately and we are over-using the troops that we have. How in the world are we going to be able to sustain a war with Iran?

This isn’t a video game, Mr. Hinderaker, nor is it an episode of 24 — this is real life and if the Iraq situation should clearly illustrate that that world is a very complicated place. We have tried the ol’ “do it our way or we’ll pound you routine” and it hasn’t worked out too well.

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As you all likely know, the Iranians are having their conference on the Holocaust this week. Via the BBC (Iran defends Holocaust conference) we learn that one of the presenters is none other than David Duke:

Participants include a number of well-known “revisionist” Western academics. American David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, is to present a paper.

You can’t make this stuff up.

h/t: F&V.

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So suggests Joshua Muravchik, in the LAT:

WE MUST bomb Iran.

It has been four years since that country’s secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.

This is madness. Currently we are dealing with serious military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and neither is going swimmingly. Indeed, the Iraq situation is a clear failure for US policy.

Even if we assume that we have the political and military might to launch an attack on Iran, there are serious questions as to the efficacy of a bombing campaign aimed as disarming Iran.

Still, Muravchik argues:

Our options therefore are narrowed to two: We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it. Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that “if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it.” We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb. Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.

Of course, there is the question of how long it will take Iran to develop nuclear weapons, how many they can produce and what type of delivery mechanism they have/can develop. As such, the future is a tad less clear than Muravchik makes it out to be.

And the notion of deterring Iran is not an unreasonable one.

Muravchik concludes:

Finally, wouldn’t such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn’t Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism? Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.

There is little doubt that there are times when the US has to do what it thinks is in its best interest even if it angers other states. However: in the current climate, can we really afford to alienate large parts of the world? Will we really be safer if we go that route? And speaking of safety, if such an attack would unleash a series of terrorist attacks on the US, would it not be counter-productive? Isn’t the main security problem facing the US at the moment protecting the homeland against new 9/11s? If bombing Iran would lead to a series of dedicated attempts to replicate 9/11 over and over, then would it really be in our national interest?

Further, what would happen to the global oil market if we bombed Iran? And from there, what would happen to our economy?

Bombing Iran would lead to 1) more terrorism, 2) radically higher oil prices, 3) greater tension with our allies, and 4) even more instability in the region. Take all of that and realize that the bombing might well not lead to the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program and one has to conclude that it is a gamble not worth taking.

Further consider the following: if we bomb Iran, cause all the problems noted above and fail to stop their nuclear program have we increased or decreased the chances that Iran might use a nuke once they develop it?

Update: some needed copy editing done (thanks to Jan Cooper)

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So estimate the Germans: Iran could have nuclear bomb by 2024: Germany

And I continue to think that it is impossible to stop them from so doing.

I certainly see no way for sanctions to accomplish anything. Indeed, given that any kind of sanction on oil is likely to hurt us at least as much as it hurts them, it strikes me as a non-starter.

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In the context of my post yesterday about the IAEA and the House Intelligence Committee, and why I am more prone to believe the UN in these matters than was once the case, I would note (from a post by Matthew Yglesias) this quote from Charles Krauthammer at an AEI event held on April 22, 2024:

DR. KRAUTHAMMER: Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

Krauthammer was wrong about us finding the WMD, but correct about the credibility issue, even if he seems to have forgotten about this statement even as he argues for drastic action against Iran.

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Via WaPo: U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran’s nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran’s capabilities, calling parts of the document “outrageous and dishonest” and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements.” The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

While I am hardly going to say that UN is perfect, I will say this: despite all the criticism that was levelled at al Baradei and the UN WMD inspectors in the build-up to the Iraq invasion, we have to face facts, the UN guys were right about the Iraq’s WMD capabilities and the administration and their allies were wrong. Indeed, fantastically wrong.

I have already expressed skepticism about the House report and the similarities to Iraq:

This all sounds a bit too much like Iraq, where it was clear that many in the administration had decided (indeed, were quite convinced) that Saddam was a WMD threat, and then went looking for the intel to make their case. I don’t think we need to repeat that methodology here.

Indeed, there is a similar sentiment quoted in the WaPo piece:

“This is like prewar Iraq all over again,” said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. “You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that’s cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.”

Now we have another element to the story: the UN weapons experts are telling us that the Iranian capabilities are not as dire as some in the administration are saying that they are. As Justin Logan blogging at Cato@Liberty puts it, Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me. As much as at the time I was skeptical of the UN’s capability to provide a clear picture of what was going on in Iraq, I now have to do a 180 and ask if the administration has a clue as to what it is saying about Iran.

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On MTP this morning, Senator Santorum (in what is, granted, a somewhat convoluted sentence to begin with) used what struck me as both an amusing sounding new phrase, but also a rather strained bit of logic on the international relations front:

And Iran, which is, which is the principal stoker of this, this Shia/Sunni sectarian violence, would love nothing more to see than the Iraqi democracy fail because of that.

You have to watch out for those darn principal stokers.

He went on to argue that the solution to the problems in Iraq and somehow linked to Iran:

This is a tactic of Iran to disrupt the—our, our efforts in Iraq by, in fact, trying to defeat the Sunnis. So there’s, there’s no question, this is a very complex war.But understand, at the, at the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq.

While I would acknowledge that there is Iranian influence in the Iraqi situation, however this has a dangerous ring to it. It seems that Santorum is suggesting that the solution to Iraq runs through Tehran–and all that can do is expand an already troubled war into a broader, more dangerous context. Further, his statements this morning struck me as shifting blame for the war in Iraq away from the fact that we invaded, to somehow being the Iranian’s fault. It had a certain bait and switch quality to it.

He went on later:

I mean, all of those things are things that I think everyone would agree that we are to do. The question is, is you have some, you have, you have sectarian violence you talked about, fomented by Iran, that we are not addressing. So the question is, how do we, how do we cure Iraq, focus on Iran? We need to do something about stopping the Iranians from being the central destabilizer of the Middle East.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you put more troops in Iraq?

SEN. SANTORUM: I don’t know if it’s a question of more troops or less troops. You get—I, I think the focus should not be Iraq, should be Iran.

Again, while acknowledging that Iran is a serious problem, I still have to wonder how a US Senator can say that that main focus should be on Iran when we have roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq and all the immediate problems that that situation presents.

The idea, that seems to be circulating in some circles, that we need to pursue a hot war with Iran whilst we still have unfinished business in Iraq, strikes me as borderline insane. If anything it appears out of sync with reality.

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Via the Scotsman: Israel buys nuclear subs

WITH Iran confidently defying pressure to curb its nuclear programme, Israel has signed a contract with Germany to buy two more submarines capable of firing nuclear missiles, it emerged yesterday.Israeli security sources said the submarines are needed to counter long-range threats from countries such as Iran, whose president has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

This is, of course, exactly the kind of behavior one would expect: as a state perceives a threat it reacts by attempting to counter the threat or, if a direct counter is not possible, it seeks to up the ante on any possible attack. As such: if Tehran were to attack Israel with some future nuclear missile, Israel is signalling that they will have the capacity to strikes back–and not just from within Israel.

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